Utraquism

Utraquism (from the Latin sub utraque specie, meaning "under both kinds"), also called Calixtinism (from chalice; Latin: calix, borrowed from Greek kalyx, shell, husk; Czech: kališníci), was a belief amongst Hussites, a reformist Christian movement based on the Czech lands, that communion under both kinds (both bread and wine, as opposed to the bread alone) should be administered to the laity during the celebration of the Eucharist.^[1] The Czech people had first been Christianized by missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who introduced the Byzantine Rite in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language and an earlier form of Communion in both kinds, only for the Roman Rite in Ecclesiastical Latin, which is less easily understood by speakers of Old Czech, to later be imposed by force upon the Czech people by bishops based in the Holy Roman Empire. As a cultural memory is believed to have survived in the interim, Communion in both kinds was a principal dogma of the Hussites and one of the Four Articles of Prague.^[2]

After the Hussite movement split into various factions early in the Hussite Wars, Hussites that emphasized the laity's right to communion under both kinds became known as Moderate Hussites, Utraquist Hussites, or simply Utraquists. The Utraquists were the largest Hussite faction.